Football’s most unlikely bromance: the untold story of Elton John, Graham Taylor and Watford FC

John Preston’s new book is a warm and redemptive tale – like ‘an Ealing comedy’ – of the unlikely partnership between pop superstar Elton John and football manager Graham Taylor. The author tells Jim White how John bought his hometown club Watford FC to try to win his father’s approval (he failed) and recalls the time Jose Mourinho was left speechless by Elton’s encyclopaedic football knowledge

Watford manager Graham Taylor, left, and Elton John take in a match together (Terry O’Neill /Iconic Images)

In 1984, Watford FC reached the FA Cup final where they met Everton. Half the country tuned in to watch because, as John Preston tells us in his magnificent new book Watford Forever, back then the cup final was an all-day television event, a marathon of fun and games.

But what constituted family entertainment in those days, as Preston discovers, would today be considered about as appropriate as live-streaming a public execution.

“As part of their coverage of the game,” he writes, “the BBC sent the then-popular comedian Michael Barrymore to Watford’s hotel. Blacked-up and wearing a curly wig, Barrymore was filmed answering questions from an interviewer in a cod Jamaican accent and quoting lyrics from Bob Marley songs. No one was sure what to make of this – either at the time, or indeed afterwards when it dawned on them that he was meant to be impersonating [the then-Watford striker] John Barnes.”